Topband: Top Band and JT65

[Richard Beerman]

Gentlemen, The topic of WSJT came up at the Central States VHF Society gathering about 12 to 15 years ago in Milwaukee. There were some very angry old timers who, like some here, had earned awards on CW and phone and felt that the awards were being “cheapened” by the use of WSJT on meteor scatter and particularly on EME. WSJT continued to attract a lot of new operators to VHF. Today, folks are running the new version of WSJT-X on 6 meters meteor scatter all day long. 

Over the years, there has been a small but vocal group of mainly European EME operators who insist on working CW ONLY. Almost all the meteor scatter and EME work in North America and Europe is  being done on WSJT today. All DXpeditions are running WSJT on EME (mainly 2 meters, but occasionally 6 meters as well). WSJT is popular on 432 MHz EME and some folks are using it on 23 cm, where CW is still popular.

Point that I am trying to make is that time marches on and new modes are always going to be developed. It’s a hobby not a vocation. If you want to operate CW and collect CW awards on 160 or any other band, then have fun. In the end, I bet that there will be more and more digital operating on TB, just as occurred on VHF. By the way, even though WSJT “reduces” by about 6 db in EME station performance requirements (ie power output, antenna gain, etc), the operator is not just a "computer accessory" One must have to decide when a trace is a valid EME signal (not a birdie) and react to it. 

I do not think that WSJT would lend itself well to 160 contesting or even in working DXpeditions. The contacts take too long.It works well for VHF contesting where the number of active stations is much smaller.So, I really do not think that there is much about WSJT to cause major heartburn among the 160 meter old timers.  73’s Dick  W5AK
> On May 15, 2017, at 6:17 AM, CT1EKD <CT1EKD at mail.telepac.pt> wrote:
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> I already saw this discussion on EME foruns, then at HF foruns and now at Top Band...
> The Facts are that JT65 (or JT9) is MORE sensitive, USE IT it if you want to... just like the QRP versus QRO , use it if you want to.
> You can find me on 1838.
> 
> Pedro - CT1EKD
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